runtime: Intermittent System.ExecutionEngineException with EF Core DBContext

After updating the nuget packages in my solution, I started experiencing this error when starting a debug session. It happens almost every other time I start debugging. The stack trace is empty, there is no inner exception, and the only thing I can do is stop execution and then restart the debugging session.

Exception message:

System.ExecutionEngineException HResult=0x80131506 Message=Exception of type ‘System.ExecutionEngineException’ was thrown.

Stack trace: Empty Steps to reproduce

protected WinsDbContextBase(DbContextOptions options, ICurrentUserContext userContext) : base(options) <== The error occurs here { … }```

Further technical details

EF Core version: (found in project.csproj or packages.config) 2.2.1 Database Provider: (e.g. Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer) SqlServer Operating system: Windows 10 IDE: (e.g. Visual Studio 2017 15.4) VS 2017 15.9.5

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 5 years ago
Comments: 22 (10 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

@camainc thanks for providing these dumps. With some further investigating by my teammate we’ve likely connected your issue to a bug in the runtime that was discovered last year. We have implemented a fix that is included in the forthcoming .Net 4.8 release and we’ve got some options for you to try that will hopefully workaround the issue using the build of .NET you already have.

The primary goal of all these workarounds is to avoid using an NGEN image for netstandard.dll and instead to use the IL image. The options are different ways of achieving that and you can pick whichever one is easiest to use/affects the right scope of processes:

[only works for x64 apps] Set environment variable COMPLUS_DisableNativeImageLoadList=netstandard.
[only works for x64 apps] Set the registry variable: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft.NETFramework\DisableNativeImageLoadList = netstandard This will affect all .NET processes that run under this user account.
[only works for x64 apps] Set the registry variable: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft.NETFramework\DisableNativeImageLoadList = netstandard This will affect all .NET processes that run on the machine.
Add an app.exe.config file adjacent to app.exe (where ‘app’ is replaced by the name of the .NET exe you have). This affects only the application associated with this config file Then add the following content to the file:

    <configuration>
        <runtime>
          <disableNativeImageLoad>
            <assemblyIdentity name="netstandard" />
          </disableNativeImageLoad>
        </runtime>
    </configuration>

If there is an existing file with a <configuration>, <runtime> or <disableNativeImageLoad> block, then the elements described above need to be “spliced in” to the existing blocks (i.e., I believe the CLR config file parser might have trouble if multiple blocks of the same name are listed).

Add an entry to machine.config which will affect all .NET processes running on the machine. This is done by editing the relevant config file: For 32 bit apps: %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\config\machine.config For 64 bit apps: %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\config\machine.config

Before editing it is a good precaution to save a copy of the existing file in case you need to roll back the change for any reason, then make the same edit as used for the app.exe.config case above.

I hope one of these options can you get debugging successfully and sorry for the trouble this has caused.

-Noah

noahfalk on Jan 25, 2019

Closing this issue as it seems resolved.

tommcdon on Feb 25, 2019

What would be most helpful to debug this is to capture a dump of the debuggee prior to continuing from that exception/killing the debuggee. If you are using Visual Studio you should be able to capture the dump via the Debug menu > Save Dump As. Once you have that dump just share it with us and we can investigate what may be going wrong.

noahfalk on Jan 23, 2019